Cato forum on liquor advertising and electronic media

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 16:32:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Cato forum on liquor advertising and electronic media

It was about a year ago when I wrote that just about every Federal agency
was scheming to regulate the Net. I take no pleasure in saying I was
right: we've seen agencies from the FDA to the FTC to the PTO try to grab
a piece of cyberspace. Indeed, last Friday at an Internet Caucus briefing,
FTC Commissioner Christine Varney said new regulations and laws were
necessary; she predicted FTC regulations would be forthcoming later this
year. 

The Center for Media Education is trying to accelerate this process. In a
fearmongering report earlier this year, the group demanded that a slew of
government agencies -- the FCC, FDA, FTC, CDC, NCI, and the WHO -- take
"urgent agction" to "protect" America's children from tobacco and liquor
advertising online.

Sound familiar? It should. Net-nemesis Sen. Exon and conservative
activists like Bruce Taylor and Donna Rice-Hughes trotted out the same
lines two years ago when arguing for the Communications Decency Act.

The Cato Institute is holding a forum next month on just this issue.
Attached is the announcement and an excerpt from the CME report.

-Declan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 10:44:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robin Hulsey <rhulsey@cato.org>

The Cato Institute invites you to a Policy Forum

Liquor Advertising and the Electronic Media

featuring

Fred Meister
Distilled Spirits Council of the United States

Dan Troy
Wiley, Rein & Fielding

Sam Kazman
Competitive Enterprise Institute

Heather Mizeur
Rep. Joseph Kennedy

Tom Howarth *
Mothers Against Drunk Driving

	For years makers of "hard" liquor refrained from advertising their products
over radio and television, but last year some companies began doing so.
Some companies have also established an advertising presence on the
Internet.  Is this free speech protected by the First Amendment, or is it a
new health threat that should be subject to regulation?

Tuesday, May 6, 1997
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
(Reception to follow)
Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20001

To register, news media please call Robin Hulsey at (202) 789-5293 or E-mail
to rhulsey@cato.org. 

* invited


****************

Excerpt from:

Center for Media Education Report
http://tap.epn.org/cme/execsum.html

Alcohol and Tobacco on the Web:
New Threats to Youth
Executive Summary


        The combination of these new Web marketing
	technologies gives marketers of alcohol and tobacco
	an arsenal of powerful new weapons. Urgent action
	is needed to ensure that effective safeguards are
	put in place to protect young people from the
	harmful effects of online marketing of alcohol and
	tobacco. Because of the unique nature of the
	interactive media, many of these new forms of
	advertising, of particular appeal to youth, appear
	to be inherently unfair and deceptive. Some of these
	practices may already be violating the law.

        The Cigarette Act, which has since 1971 kept
	advertising of cigarettes off radio and television,
	applies to "any medium of electronic communication
	subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal
	Communications Commission" and thus would be
	applicable to the Internet as well. The alcohol
	industries have not been subjected to the same kinds
	of legal barriers to advertising as tobacco.
	However, all advertising, including online
	advertising, is subject to the current laws against
	deceptive, unfair, or other illegal practices.

[...]


        Among the recommendations for action, the Center for
	Media Education calls for the following steps to
	combat the online promotion of alcohol and tobacco
	products to young people:

 1. Congress should conduct hearings on the online
	marketing of alcohol and tobacco to the nation's
	children.

 2. The Federal Trade Commission should use its
	authority over unfair and deceptive advertising to
	immediately launch an investigation into these
	practices. The FTC should also expand its current
	inquiry on online privacy to include alcohol and
	tobacco marketing data-collection practices.

 3. The Food and Drug Administration should carefully
	monitor online tobacco promotion developments and
	develop any additional safeguards needed to protect
	youth that are not already covered by the Cigarette
	Act.

 4. Federal agencies responsible for the public health,
	including the National Cancer Institute and the
	Centers for Disease Control, should examine the
	implications for public health of online marketing
	of alcohol and tobacco products.

 5. The national public health community, including
	professional medical organizations, should launch
	initiatives to educate their members and the public
	about this issue.

 6. The international health community, including the
	World Health Organization, should launch similar
	inquiries. Special attention should be given to the
	negative consequences of new media marketing in the
	developing world. The U.S. should play a leadership
	role in the international arena to create effective
	global safeguards.

 7. Parents and educators should help educate our
	nation's youth about these new dangers. They should
	establish policies in the schools to limit exposure
	of underage youth to these sites.

 8. Alcohol industries should abide by their own
	self-regulatory codes and stop targeting youth in
	all media, including online.

 9. Cigarette companies should refrain from moving onto
	the Internet to market and promote their products.
	If companies fail to comply with the Cigarette Act,
	appropriate legal action should be taken.

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